Stage 1: Exploring significant passages from each Fitt: Because the essay is built on passages from the text
Stage 2: Which theme will your essay focus on? Green Magic
Stage 3: Research Recap. What source has been most valuable in your understanding of the poem? How?
Stage 4 Passages on Theme using a T Chart:
Step 1: Pose questions about how the text came to mean? And why. What is the Pearl Poem doing with this theme? Ask yourself what the poet might want to communicate through the plot or the actions of a character. Pose questions about how the poet shaped the way you understand the poem. Aim for a possible claim statement. Put at the top of the T Chart.
Step 2: Using a table, write out all the passages that fit your theme (with page numbers). Emphasize passages that answer your T Chart question. This is a more specific version of Stage 1 – that only uses passages that apply to your possible claim statement.
Step 3 Explain and interpret each passage in Step 2 from your point of view.
Step 4 Discuss what scholars say about 4 of the passages just analyzed in Step 3.
They Say, You Say - compare the take of what the scholars say to what you say. Don’t know what
scholars are saying about this passage? Then research it more or analyze a more significant passage.
Step 5. Study the visual representation of passages you created in Step 2. Mediate on the passages you analyzed. Now formulate an answer to your T Chart question. If meaningful, this answer can serve as the claim statement for your Literary Analysis and the passages and scholarly analysis form a beginning outline of your essay.
Stage 5: Write your claim statement for this essay (see syllabus, especially page 12):
Stage 6 Draft
Stage 7 Polished Essay
Literary Analysis T-Chart